Justin, boy you hit a nerve! You remind me of me during the 1999 ASOPA portrait festival when I innocently marched up to the microphone and asked the panel on stage if it was alright to use an opaque projector. Dead silence. They himmed and hawed uncomfortably while I stood there clueless. Sandon finally mumbled something about an opaque projector being a crutch that could be overrelied upon and would stifle my development. Well, I used my opaque projector anyway, but Sandon was right. It became a crutch. In 2002 I attended a week of Incaminati
http://www.studioincamminati.org That was the end of my opaque projector.
Justin, there is simply more joy and excitement from painting from life. There are also many color and value discoveries to be made that will not be made by copying from photographs. My suggestion: have some friends over for dinner every month with the following proviso: You cook for them and they sit two hours for you to paint. Give them a glass of wine after the first hour and maybe they'll sit for three. I did this and it turned into a business- without the dinner and wine. I still use photographs for traditional portraits, but the jobs I favor are the faster portrait sketches from life.
When you work from photographs try this instead of the projector: squint at the photo just as you would a live model. Place the photo on a music stand nearer to your face than the more distant canvas. Paint with your arm extended holding the brush way back from the ferrule, not up close like your pictures show. Start the same way you already do: with a thinned umber. But paint larger tones more freely and flatly, painting over the line. Focus on big angles and geometric shapes, zero in on more precise drawing from a larger view. Check out the student gallery here:
http://www.studioincamminati.org/gallery.php -All of it painted from life, and painted very very swiftly.
Happy painting!
Chris Kolupski
Hybrid Mode
